The Ballad Of One-Eyed Mike - Poem by Robert William Service

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This is the tale that was told to me by the man with the crystal eye,As I smoked my pipe in the camp-fire light, and the Glories swept the sky;As the Northlights gleamed and curved and streamed, and the bottle of "hooch" was dry.

A man once aimed that my life be shamed, and wrought me a deathly wrong;I vowed one day I would well repay, but the heft of his hate was strong.He thonged me East and he thonged me West; he harried me back and forth,Till I fled in fright from his peerless spite to the bleak, bald-headed North.

And there I lay, and for many a day I hatched plan after plan,For a golden haul of the wherewithal to crush and to kill my man;And there I strove, and there I clove through the drift of icy streams;And there I fought, and there I sought for the pay-streak of my dreams.

So twenty years, with their hopes and fears and smiles and tears and such,Went by and left me long bereft of hope of the Midas touch;About as fat as a chancel rat, and lo! despite my will,In the weary fight I had clean lost sight of the man I sought to kill.

'Twas so far away, that evil day when I prayed to the Prince of GloomFor the savage strength and the sullen length of life to work his doom.Nor sign nor word had I seen or heard, and it happed so long ago;My youth was gone and my memory wan, and I willed it even so.

It fell one night in the waning light by the Yukon's oily flow,I smoked and sat as I marvelled at the sky's port-winey glow;Till it paled away to an absinthe gray, and the river seemed to shrink,All wobbly flakes and wriggling snakes and goblin eyes a-wink.

'Twas weird to see and it 'wildered me in a queer, hypnotic dream,Till I saw a spot like an inky blot come floating down the stream;It bobbed and swung; it sheered and hung; it romped round in a ring;It seemed to play in a tricksome way; it sure was a merry thing.

In freakish flights strange oily lights came fluttering round its head,Like butterflies of a monster size--then I knew it for the Dead.Its face was rubbed and slicked and scrubbed as smooth as a shaven pate;In the silver snakes that the water makes it gleamed like a dinner-plate.

It gurgled near, and clear and clear and large and large it grew;It stood upright in a ring of light and it looked me through and through.It weltered round with a woozy sound, and ere I could retreat,With the witless roll of a sodden soul it wantoned to my feet.

And here I swear by this Cross I wear, I heard that "floater" say:"I am the man from whom you ran, the man you sought to slay.That you may note and gaze and gloat, and say `Revenge is sweet',In the grit and grime of the river's slime I am rotting at your feet.

"The ill we rue we must e'en undo, though it rive us bone from bone;So it came about that I sought you out, for I prayed I might atone.I did you wrong, and for long and long I sought where you might live;And now you're found, though I'm dead and drowned, I beg you to forgive."

So sad it seemed, and its cheek-bones gleamed, and its fingers flicked the shore;And it lapped and lay in a weary way, and its hands met to implore;That I gently said: "Poor, restless dead, I would never work you woe;Though the wrong you rue you can ne'er undo, I forgave you long ago."

Then, wonder-wise, I rubbed my eyes and I woke from a horrid dream.The moon rode high in the naked sky, and something bobbed in the stream.It held my sight in a patch of light, and then it sheered from the shore;It dipped and sank by a hollow bank, and I never saw it more.

This was the tale he told to me, that man so warped and gray,Ere he slept and dreamed, and the camp-fire gleamed in his eye in a wolfish way--That crystal eye that raked the sky in the weird Auroral ray.